Statement of Rigor

Worldwide University (WU) aspires to be an institution of excellence and strives to offer academic programs that reflect a Christian worldview. Although open to the general public, its educational programs reflects its Christian ethos.

1. As a school of excellence, WU strives to implement an educational philosophy that challenges our students to achieve the highest level of proficiency in their respective professions, including:
   • Providing leadership
   • Enhancing professional practice in their respective fields
   • Responding to challenges with creativity, analytical and critical thought, in order to provide solutions that are both practical and theoretically sound.
2. WU seeks to include qualified applicants who want a professional education and will benefit from it, but currently have inadequate access.
3. WU seeks to require students to achieve ambitious learning goals while still understanding and being able to apply what they have learned.
4. WU seeks to equip students to continue learning after graduation.

Context

WU seeks to respond to the contexts of its students. Consequently, WU guides students to explore their own environment and apply what they learn in their own particular contexts. The advantages of this approach are that students use the complexities of their environment as a resource, e.g. for descriptive and implementational studies and for grappling with the realities of implementation. Where possible, students learn how other students work in very different contexts.

Objectives-based

An objectives-based system (also known as competency-based) offers significant advantages over process-driven and norm-referenced approaches:

1. Assessment is fairer and often more objective.
2. All students can pass if they meet the competency requirements. (In norm-referenced approaches, the bottom students must be failed at an arbtirary percentage.)
3. WU can offer alternative pathways:
1. WU can offer Alternative Assessment of Competency (AAC), for example, assessment by portfolio.
2. WU can still offer tuition-based courses. The purpose of tuition is to achieve the course objectives.
3. WU can offer different kinds of tuition for different student populations, as long as they consistently address the same objectives.
4. WU can experiment with MOOC-like courses as long as tutors can closely monitor students' progress toward specified course outcomes.
4. The requirements for higher grades can be defined carefully and disclosed to the student, with the possiblitiy of enabling students to get consistently higher grades.
5. Students who achieve at a high enough level might also earn more advanced units in the same field.